i m dara brown with the hour s top stories. britain s royal family celebrating christmas at a church near the queen s sandringham estate. the queen thanking those who served and sharing her excitement for the birth of her eighth great grandchild. u.s. troops serving overseas in syria enjoyed some christmas cheer. they received gifts from operation holiday express. president trump sending his best wishes to the troops and thanking them for their service. now back to dateline. welcome back to dateline extra. i m craig melvin. registered sex offendser frank cano and steve gordon were in police custody, arrested on four counts each of murder and
forceable rape. and detective julissa trapp was about to go face to face with steven gordon in the interrogation room. they would go to dark places, and she hoped to come out with information for the victims families. here again is keith morrison. . reporter: for six months, kathy menze serks waited for news about her daughter, kianna, woke up every day hoping she s call or text and dreading a knock at the door, which in april 2014 is what happened. my heart sunk when they came because i knew right away that it wasn t going to be good news. reporter: no, not good news at all. anaheim police told her that two men, frank cano and steven gordon, were now under arrest for the murder of her daughter and three other young women in orange county. what were you like that night? i just wanted to sleep. i wanted to, like, go to sleep and wake up and pinch myself.
personally? i just think because she s helpless. you re on the street. you re working as a prostitute, and you run into steve gordon and frank cano, and your last hours on this earth are horrific. and then they discard you like trash. reporter: trash. detective trapp is still haunted by trash. that keeps bringing her mind back here. even though it is a landfill, i mean it is quite peaceful when it s quiet. reporter: somewhere under here, in addition to kianna, josephine, and martha, there was victim number five. and so detective trapp worked her sources until she had a name. it would be reasonable to say, okay, that s her. she s here. absolutely. logically, yes.
brutal as it was. what has it done to your understanding of human beings? they re evil. there s lots of evil in this world, lots of it. reporter: the mothers will have to sit through another trial. frank cano is still waiting for his. he s pleaded not guilty. but for detective trapp, it was a measure of relief, and finally she gave those rosaries to four grieving mothers. it s interesting to discover in this line of work that homicide detectives are actually softies. i think that the more you allow yourself to feel, the better you re going to be as a detective. and we have to go to the dark places in order to find answers. the quicker we can get in and out, you know, the better it is for all of us. reporter: answers from dark places. we went to the jail where gordon was kept before his transfer to death row. here he was, a man who claimed to know the nature of his evil acts.